A biography, an exhaustively researched history and a making-of book rolled into one, “The Searchers” fleshes out Ford, who comes across as complex as John Wayne's character in the film, which deals with prickly issues of race and miscegenation.

“The Searchers” is one of the recent Texas-related volumes to come across the Express-News book desk. Here's look at some additional worthy ones.

Another hybrid book is Bob Thompson's “Born on a Mountaintop: On the Road with Davy Crockett and the Ghosts of the Wild Frontier”﻿ (Crown, $27). In the road trip tradition of Sarah Vowell, the former Washington Post features writer follows Crockett's footsteps in modern time from his birth in Tennessee to the gates of the Alamo.

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Kate Breakey may now live in Tucson, Ariz., but we can still claim the native Australian photographer whose haunting retouched silver photographic still lifes and animal images have an Old Master painterly quality. Breakey, who moved to Austin in 1988 and taught at UT-Austin for a decade, has published a gorgeous book of photograms or photogenic drawings, “Las Sombras: The Shadows” (University of Texas Press, $75). The imagery, made without a camera by placing objects — bugs, snakes, hummingbirds — on photographic paper and shining light on them, have a sepia-toned Old World quality, as if discovered in the bottom of an old Victorian trunk.

“Passionate Nation” author James L. Haley, who's also written about Jack London and Sam Houston, tackles “The Texas Supreme Court”﻿ (University of Texas Press, $29.95) in a narrative history covering Texas' first 150 years. Rather than taking a legalistic approach, Haley focuses on personalities and judicial philosophies.

Former Trinity University professor Char Miller delves into the border region's complex political and ecological systems in “On the Edge: Water, Immigration and Politics in the Southwest” (Trinity University Press, $17.95). Miller, now the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College, crystallizes difficult issues leading to the region's characterization as a no-man's land.

It sounds like an episode of “Fringe.” Enoch Maarduk, a publisher of books both print and electronic, posts “a harmless little idea” about electromagnetic creatures invading Earth on his blog, and soon a “gun-toting, polyester-jacketed dude” shows up at his door demanding to know where he got his information. Welcome to “Exophobe” (DKM Publications, $29.95), San Antonio writer D. Kenton Mellott's bumpy, self-published, sci-fi ride.

Old soldiers can appreciate “Faded Glory: A Century of Forgotten Texas Military Sites, Then and Now” (Texas A&M University Press, $29.95). Written by Texas Historical Commission member Thomas E. Alexander and retired commission chief historian Dan K. Utley, the book is an absorbing, illustrated guide to 29 sites from the Mexican War to WWII that have fallen to time, neglect and the elements. It's full of historic sketches, photographs and maps, as well as current-day photographs.

A site that hasn't faded is Fort Hood, one of the largest military installations in the world, with 55,000 personnel. Kenneth T. Macleish, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University, spent a year embedded at the Central Texas base, gathering material for “Making War at Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community” (Princeton University Press, $29.95). The book illuminates the impact that two wars over a 12-year period can have on deployed soldiers, their families and their community.

When a respected barrister is found strangled at a seedy hotel in South London's Crystal Palace, Detective Inspector Gemma James and her trusted partner, Detective Sgt. Melody Talbot, are called to the scene in best-selling McKinney-based author Deborah Crombie's “The Sound of Broken Glass” (HarperCollins, $25.99).

From spoonbread to sopa de fideo, margaritas to molasses cookies, San Antonio sisters Candy Wagner and Sandra Marquez have it covered when it comes to “Cooking Texas Style” (University of Texas Press, $19.95). Featuring “traditional recipes from the Lone Star State,” the book has just been reprinted, 30 years and 40,000 copies since its first publication. It still gets high marks for authenticity.

Chronicling a history of violence, the redrawing of borders and political inequality, University of Iowa professor Omar S. Valerio-Jiménez examines cultural change over 200 years in “River of Hope: Forging Identity in the Rio Grande Borderlands” (Duke University Press, $26.95).

In a more personal vein, border native Beatriz de la Garza's “From the Republic of the Rio Grande: A Personal History of the Place and People” (University of Texas Press, $45) explores biculturalism and the deep attachment of the people of the area to the land.

Dan Utley and Cynthia J. Beeman, past president of the East Texas Historical Association, hit the road in “History Along the Way: Stories Beyond the Texas Roadside Markers” (Texas A&M University Press, $25) and offer the skinny on the narratives and colorful characters, from a national leader of the Campfire Girls to a ragtime composer, of more than 100 metal markers scattered throughout the state.

In Texas native A.G. Howard's debut young adult novel “Splintered” (Amulet, $17.95), the real Wonderland is darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. To break a curse of insanity that dates all the way back to her great-great-great grandmother Alice Lidell, the inspiration for “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,” Alyssa must go down the rabbit hole and pass a series of tests, such as conquering a ferocious bandersnatch.

Beautifully photographed and lovingly researched and written, “Texas Waterfowl” (Texas A&M University Press, $25) is a must for those obsessed with webbed feet. The guide, by wildlife biologists William P. Johnson and Mark W. Lockwood, describes the life cycles and habitats of 45 species of ducks, geese and swans.